How much money did you start with?

That is *awesome*! You are my capitalist hero for pulling that off!

* * * * *

I started with a premium membership and got $L 250 from the parrot or something.

Think I paid 25 USD/month for a month or two, can't remember, though I was stuck on a 512m parcel for ages. Put in 500 USD once just for cushion, but then took it back out real soon after as the estate's growth kicked in. It now makes 500 USD every three and a half days or so.

Desmond - (how can I ask this without sounding sycophantic) I admire your accomplishments with Caledon.

I was always a bit curious how it grew to what it is today - and whether someone out there simply paid/pays for it out of their own pocket, if it grew bit by bit with land acquisitions, etc.

Now seems as good a time as any to try and nosily ask those things of the Guv'nah.

I bought my first Lindens in order to buy land. When I first came in I couldn't care less about how my avatar looked, but I was itching to buy property and build on it. Because of the account limits on new accounts, it took two days to buy the Lindens. I bought my first parcel, started to build and landscape, and enjoyed every minute of it.

Way to go. I went premium soon after I got here so that I could get "first land" which turned has turned out great. I used the bonus I got for giving payment information to rent my first shop and I've been at least breaking even ever since.

I got the free $250L sign up bonus too. I joined as premium so I do have the $400L stipend. My first time at a money tree, I pulled it up by accident. I didn't use money trees much after that.

For me, camping was a way to dig through the dances I'd collected and see how they worked with different songs, rather than sit like a statue. There might be 10 or 20 folks just sitting and I was dancing. If everyone else was dancing, they were usually doing the same dance loaded into the camp pad, but I would do any dance other than that dance.

Camping was either a way to buy more dances, or pay for bingo cards and other gambling games so that I could buy more dances from my winnings. Another use for camping, once I didn't need to camp as much was as a reward for organizing my inventory. The longer I could sit there digging out "objects", wearing them on my hand and naming them, the more $L I'd be rewarded.

I didn't start making and selling my FlyDance animations until I'd been around for many months. By then, thanks to winnings and tips, my dance collection was pretty sizeable. I'm very grateful to all the folks who have bought my animations, as I'd usually turn around and buy more dances.

~ March 05 got a premium membership and a 512m parcel, designed stuff in obscurity and then left the grid for a long time

~ Eventually got a wee bit of land; a new friend (Garnet Psaltery) believed in me and allowed me to put a shop on a parcel of hers

~ Paid Garnet 10% percent of profits for that, became a merchant, saved up enough for a region one chair and table sale at a time

~ Feb 06, on a grid where gambling, bdsm, porn and land flipping ruled, I went the opposite direction and opened Caledon

~ Used profits to buy another region until there were 49 of them

~ here I am The street encircling Victoria City Park is named Garnet street.

yes he did in another thread.

his comments kinda confused me too

?

!?

Tons of sins, maybe, but I never yet said I owned even one sim.

You must be thinking of someone with a similar name. If not, please do me a favour and find the post where I am supposed to have made such a claim.

Me too L250 from the parrot on OI. Went premium the next day and have been ever since.

Back on 2005 there were no free accounts. When I registered and paid my $10 bucks I got some Lindens along with my registration. I played bingo at 1AM every night and hit big ($10,000L). Bought land, sold it for profit when a road was added, flipped some waterfront for big bucks (sold to Anshe) and then settled in the sim I am in now.

.

A friend purchsed a premium membership for me for my birthday before i'd ever logged on to SL. Got my L$500 stipend the first week and think I got a few hundred with the new account. When my next stipend came in I used it to purchase my discount 512 sqm "first land" (ah those were the days). Luckily I moved in next door to some mental woman. I started building making a mess, playing around and learning. She hated the eyesore and hated my sarcasm more and bought the plot from me 7 days later. I made L$5000 from that! Immediately invested that in more land and went into the land flipping business for the next 6 months whilst learning to build. Then went onto content creation which was allot more profitable. Like 3Ring, I've never invested a single penny of my real money in SL. And every dollar I have taken out is 100% pure profit. Wonder if it is still possible to do that nowadays?

DOH

Similar name, my eyes tricked me, I take back my comment (but won't delete it because it has been quoted) sorry about that... please forgive me.. (I need to double check and not depend on this old memory of mine when it comes to names)

(would have im'd you to clarify my mistake but you have them turned off here)
The person I mixed you up with was"Elanthius Flagstaff".
(don't ask how I managed that, I guess to my eyes and memory the first names seemed the same)

No worries. For a few minutes I thought I might have had one but somehow managed to misplace it.

Matter of fact, I want to have a private sim all to myself one day. The only trouble is I'm such a painful slow builder it would be a sheer waste at this point. Also the Lindens need to pull their finger out on regional settings for Windlight before I take the plunge.

Thank you for understanding. (I suspect the other person made the same mistake I did)

I too would love to own my own sim, for me it is not that I am a slow builder, it is that I just plain can not afford the cost, nor can I justify it at this time.

It is a dream that is out of reach for me.

Back in that year i am not allowed to say on some forums without being harassed, even when germane to the topic....in the year TWO THOUSAND THREE....we started with about 2000L i think. And then we had a stipend that was around 2-3k for me. It really depended on several factors.

The first thing i bought during my first night in SL was a dress from Fey Brightwillow, then some wings, and some gold hoop earrings, and next a fairy outfit to go with the wings, which i mixed around with the dress.

I started out with 250, for signing up and I think about another 1250 doled out in weird chunks when I paid for my basic account and got a stipend and a bonus and stuff. Spent it on avatars. Spent lots more on avatars. I think the first might have been a jackal... it was one of my first anyway. Gonna log on in a few minutes and buy another avatar. A jackal.

wow i can't remember what it was..whatever people got back in 2006 ..i think 1 or 2k
but that didn't last long at all..the first thing i bought was me and a few friends that were on basic accounts some clothes and things to get our avatars setup..
a tentacal monster here an xcite whatever there ..then ran my limit up and went to slxchange and just kept shopping..
i rented a house for me and my friends i came into sl with ...then 3 of us went to a place called goddess of love about two weeks before it opened and got jobs..

i think my stripen was 400..i kept thinking someone was putting money in my account and not telling me..i didn't even know i was getting weekly money lol

all in all it was 8 of us that came into sl at first..all setup up with nice avatars and clothes and things and a place to stay and 3 of us with real nice jobs in a club that we never knew would take off like it did..all in the first 3 days..

i miss my first year..it was a blast..i was sad when i turned 1

I used to use the beta grid to build/script, but since you can't get what you build/script there back into SL, I've gone over to running my own OpenSim (www.opensimulator.org) as a sandbox, and using SecondInventory (www.secondinventory.com) to move stuff back and forth.. You can download and install OpenSim on your pc and have your own private little full sim to build in.. Another nice feature of your own private sim, nobody bugging you while you work.. I used to get hit on something fierce back when I used to spend a LOT of time in the main grid sandboxes... If you run Opensim on windows, you don't have to be a raving geek to get it working. The developers have a easily installed/configured package for Windows that I believe anybody who can install the LL viewer can install and get working.. Disclaimer: I have nothing to do with either of the above links.. just a satisfied user..

Tas

I started out with L$0, and was no payment info on file for over a year. My first L$ were taken from a money tree, then later from a club called the Matrix which had balls appear in random location within the building. Touching the blue ones gave prizes and touching the red ones gave you L$1.
I existed on freebies for about a year and a half and must have only spent about L$10-L$50 in all that time. I simply didn't need to do otherwise.
I spent the time learning as much about building and scripting as I could during this time as well as having a blast immersing myself in roleplay.

A long story shortened significantly:

One day a man came to the forums asking for help, they needed a simple tip jar script. I read about it during my afternoon and when I logged in to SL that night and sent them an IM to see if anyone had responded, they said that nobody had responded yet and he was still needing one. So I gave him a copy of one I had made. After he came back a few times and asked for some changes which I did and asked him what he was using it for as it seemed very odd changes for tip jars.
It was then I found out he was using it as a primitive device for a voting contest in which he would calculate the leaderboad once a day and display a texture of the XL spreadsheet on a large prim.
Anyway we talked about where he saw that going and he said that he was going to need more changes and was that OK?
I saw an opportunity that day and seized it with both hands which lead me to creating my first major scripting product.
That product so far has provided a revenue which has been able to support my USD 195 tier level now for over a year and half and keeps my reserves such that I don't have to worry about tier any time in the foreseeable future nor have I needed to buy L$ in over a year.

Im pretty sure when i signed up, as a free account...I got given 500L straight away...it felt like a LOT then..

Day 2, met this guy who decided for some reason I was a worthy cause and took me hair,clothes & shoe shopping..manicure , pedicure...the works...that act of kindness always stayed with me and I try and do what I can for the new people I come across too

Stripped for a while and paid rent on a really pretty little tiki bungalow.....forget the landlord but he was SO cool and inspired me to get into home rentals...so I saved my ill gotten gains until I had enough to go get my first bit of land, felt like a Queen with my 6000sq m!!

I was premium from the start - my earlier self crashed and burned, after having done not much else than buy his way through the grid. No skills, no knowledge and not much interest in acquiring them at the time - I was too fascinated by SL and all it had (and still has) to offer.

Now..... well I make textures which some are kind enough to buy - I still remember the buzz from that first "ka-CHING" when someone thought something I'd made was good enough to buy (a stained glass texture, I think). Fatima and I have our little estate business, which thankfully has a high occupancy rate so covers the tier cost and a long-term capital regain. Fatima of course has her popular Antique Artistry business (no spam intended) which started off as some art work and an outside table and chairs in wicker (still one of her best sellers!)

Haven't had to buy Lindens in a couple of years now - but compared to what I used to buy I guess I'm just about at the break-even point lol

Inc

I started collecting from money trees which was also a cool way to explore. I tried camping for a bit but it was soo boring. (Although, when I started, you could make $20 - 30L/hour some places.) Then I won a bikini contest and got my first REAL taste of heroin, er I mean $L. Shopping on $500L was so liberating I stuffed my credit card in the slot and bought more.

Bumbled along with occasional $L purchases until I got into making clothes. When my things actually started to sell, I pretty much stopped buying $L and went off my earnings. I did pay my premium account via CC but only cuz the exchange rate from Onrez to SL wasn't in my favor.

Day 1: Signed up, got the L$250 from the parrot on the original OI, went shopping.
Day 2: Went Premium and got the L$1000 premium bonus, went shopping.
Day 3: Bought L$ with credit card, bought some LL first land and then went shopping.
(seeing a trend here? lol)
Day 4: Bitten by the old 30 day L$ purchase limit Wandered the grid without purpose.
Day 8: Discovered the forums.
Day 12: Discovered SLX and rejoiced!

Tas, do you need a super fast computer to run it. I loaded a few things like SL opensim and Hippo opensim and they lagged badly on a 2core with 4gig memory.

I was going to already established grids though.

I tried to log in and it won't let me, I'm age verified... any ideas how I might get on?

Edit:

I'm on in my bank alt with age verification and payment info